This will be the first installment of what I envision as a bi-monthly-ish newsletter about my own photography practice. I’m writing Dansk Dokumentarisme, a Danish-language newsletter about other people's photography, but I needed a place to share my own, and hence I’ll be trying my hand at this. So far, it’s mostly been the (very occasional) writing, but I am a photographer, and so it makes sense to share some of that work—and a few news snippets about what else is going on.
One of the reasons to dedicate more energy to a newsletter is to limit my reliance on social media. Like lots of other people, I’m not very impressed with the way these giant platforms have aligned with the current political president in the US. What was once thought of as a fun place to share photos and say hi to old friends, have has been turned into a hyper-capitalistic attention machine often used for malicious gains. And I’m feeling the effects on myself quite clearly. From obsessively checking my phone, to being more or less unable to read long-form, it’s clear that these apps and websites do more harm than good. Even to a grown man.
In an attempt to regain some of that lost focus, I’ve started publishing some of my daily photography on my website. I’ve always been photographing outside the main projects I’m working on, but even this has been slipping. Putting more energy and time into a daily act of photography seems like an obvious way to practice paying closer attention.
I strongly believe that photography is a form of meditation: a conscious direction of attention to where it might not naturally go. It gives me a focused way of noticing life’s small miracles—or great catastrophes.
Years ago, I read Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing—less of a self-help book than it sounds, and more of a quirky exploration of attention and the attack it’s under from various commercial entities. In it, she made a point that has stuck with me ever since. She writes that in an economy where our attention and eyeballs have been commercialized, choosing to direct your attention elsewhere is an active act of resistance.
I like that way of framing it. Here’s a few images from the last months:
What else is going on?
With friends Jacob Birch and Stinus Duch, we’re getting closer to finishing the second edition of our bi-annual journal, New Danish Photography. We launched the first one a little less than two years ago, and hopefully this one will be out in the world sometime in late summer. It’ll feature 12 incredible excerpts from stories from 12 different photographers.
While not breaking news (as this has been in the works for years), I’ll be included in an updated version of the permanent photography exhibition at Den Sorte Diamant. I’ve been working closely with Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer from The Royal Library to showcase some of the work I’ve been doing on environmental activism and climate for many years. I’m really looking forward to sharing more about this in the future.
Back in January, I had the great honor of being a part of the judging panel at the Danish Photo of the Year competition. I wrote a newsletter about how that whole process works, which I’ve translated into English and published to my website. At the award show, I was asked (forced) to present a prize and used the opportunity to say a few words to the Minister of Culture, who was in attendance, about the dire state of financing documentary photography in Denmark. I offered to have a coffee and expand on those problems, which he accepted. We’ve landed on a date. I’ll bring an update when that meeting has happened.
This is only relevant to the Danish-speaking crowd, but I also published a podcast episode in which I interviewed professor Jens E. Kjeldsen, who has done some serious research into what kind of images actually win these photo competitions. This might be interesting to some of you.
That’s it for now. Feel free to reply and let me know if all of this makes sense. You can just reply to this email.
I hope to see some of you in the real world soon,
Emil